Retired Calgary judge to chair new Alberta electoral boundary panel
Published 9:30 pm Tuesday, June 2, 2026
A retired Calgary judge has been picked to chair a new provincial electoral boundaries panel.
Former provincial court and Alberta Court of Appeal justice Brian O’Ferrall will head the UCP majority panel which was created to take another look at the province’s electoral map.
A previous five-member panel, which included former Sylvan Lake mayor Susan Samson completed a new map adding two more riding to the 87 legislature seats.
However, two of the three UCP-appointed members of the panel came up with their own, much different, electoral map in a minority report.
For instance, the minority map divides Red Deer into four hybrid ridings – Red Deer-Blackfalds, Red Deer-Sylvan Lake, Red Deer-Innisfail and Red Deer-Lacombe featuring a mix of urban and rural voters.
The majority map had only minor tweaks to the existing Red Deer-North and Red Deer-South configuration. The north riding was adjusted slightly to include a recently annexed chunk of Red Deer County land.
The minority map, which would increase the number of seats to 91, has been criticized by the NDP as an attempt at gerrymandering by potentially giving rural voters a bigger say while reducing the influence of Calgary and Edmonton.
Kathleen Ganley and Christina Gray, NDP members of the Select Special Committee on Electoral Boundaries, expressed concerns about how the appointment of O’Farrell, who has donated to the UCP in the past.
In a joint statement the two MLAs said that the Acting Chief Justice, Canadian Bar Association, and the Law Society declined to participate in the process to appoint a chair “citing its irregularity.”
As a result, only two applicants came forward, they said.
“Additionally, the appointed chair made donations to the UCP as recently as 2025. In a process that is already regarded by the public as illegitimate, this clear partisan leaning does nothing to restore legitimacy. Instead, it continues to show that this is about the UCP drawing a partisan map.
“Alberta’s NDP committee members asked for the committee to interview the applicants, but the UCP members did not support even that minimal level of transparency. Albertans don’t even know who encouraged the applicants to apply or why they felt comfortable applying after the legal community has chosen to stay away.
“The UCP could have prevented all of this by adopting the majority report of the original Electoral Boundaries Commission.”